A careful analyst of the textured nature of historical repetition

May 5, 2024 1:40 AM

Thucydides intimates that the careful art of drawing fitting analogies, honed as it may be through the diligent study of political history, will assist some to think more clearly about the present. But mastering this art should not be confused with political mastery. The power of ‘great’ events will remain too easily harnessed, and too hard to control, to serve only those who are clear-headed and well-intentioned. Specious analogies will remain a danger for as long as people stand to benefit from them, and their emotional pull will continue to knock even the most astute off balance. And yet, if there’s little chance that political life will ever be freed from distortive thinking, it may still prove less hazardous for those who look toward history as something more than a sourcebook of convenient parallels. from What would Thucydides say? [Aeon]

Thucydides previously

posted by chavenet (6 comments total)

Thanks for introducing me to Thucydides (I think I'd like to read about him rather than read him). I see where Mr Fisher is casting their fly but framings like "Among them, the use of ‘fascism’ to characterise Right-wing populist.." serves to characterise all such writing as eronious - it would help the (less schooled) reader if a few indicators of real' Fascism so often neglected in journalistic warnings of Fascism, e.g. the centripetal thrust of such movements, or considered victimisation and othering. (Reading further I probably mischaracterised the author's intent).

Is Mr Fisher saying that shallow thinkers are trying to utilise Thucydides as a centralising model? (At halfway point and I think it's exactly what he's trying to help us gain).
posted by unearthed at 2:55 AM on May 5 [1 favorite]

An ancient Greek walks into a tailor shop with a couple of torn tunics.

The tailor says, “Euripides?”

The customer says, “Eumenides?”
posted by lalochezia at 7:12 AM on May 5 [9 favorites]

On no Euclidn't
posted by phooky at 7:41 AM on May 5 [5 favorites]

Political scientist discovers that using history is complicated and that it may be misused. Film at 11.
posted by Galvanic at 8:37 AM on May 5 [1 favorite]

I haven't yet read him but I do have The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War which is among the best-designed books I own.
posted by neuron at 9:10 AM on May 6 [2 favorites]

I got partway through before I decided TFA did not have anything to tell me, probably.

A history that wasn't, but which everyone(1) pretends happened, is that at some point in the past there was a battle royale between the Philosophers and the Sophists, which the Philosophers won decisively. So that ever since, human affairs, or at least US national politics, have been ruled by wise well-meaning men(2) acting in good faith to realize some legitimate vision for the common good. But it is not so, TFA informs us solemnly, and moreover it is never likely to be so.

Precisely. Because the battle royale never happened, and the Sophists do actually win at least as often as not. And even when they don't win, they occupy positions with veto power. They can at best be bought off, temporarily. These points, and ones in like vein in an essay that starts where TFA does, do not seem particularly profound to me.

TFA's approving quote of Marx's analysis of why revolutions never revolve as much as the promise of their birth portends is another clinker ignores a century of scientific anthropology and sociology, which explain much better than Marx could why some of the oppressed wind up standing with the oppressors.

(1) Everyone whom the writer of TFA pays attention to, anyway.

(2) I did that on purpose.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:10 PM on May 6